FOI 0670-2023/24- Incidents of women falling from height

Request:

We would like to request the following information from you to better understand incidents of women falling from height where serious injury or death occurs.

Q1. Can you tell us how many reports of women falling from height the height of a building or public place were made to you between 1973 and 2023;

Q2. How many of those falls resulted in death?

Q3. In how many cases were there witnesses to the fall?

Q4. How many of these cases had a marker of domestic abuse relating to the woman who fell, her address or a partner or family member;

Q5. How many of these cases led to a charge of homicide or attempted homicide, GBH or ABH;

Q6. Were there any convictions? … and if so please can you specify.

For all the questions, we would need data from the period of 1973-2023.

Response: 

Extent of Searches to Locate Information

Following receipt of your request searches were conducted within North Yorkshire Police to locate relevant information

Decision

Your request for information below has now been considered. In respect of Section 1(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) we can neither confirm nor deny if North Yorkshire Police does or does not hold the information you have requested. It is estimated that the cost of complying with your request for information would exceed the “appropriate costs limit” under Section 12(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Section 12 (2) allows a public authority to refuse a request where it estimates that it would exceed to appropriate limit to either comply with the request in its entirety or confirm or deny whether the requested information is held.

Due to the nature of our recording systems; the information requested, if held, is not in an easily retrievable format.

Falling from a height is not deemed an offence itself, therefore, to establish whether any relevant information is held, it would be necessary to manually review every crime/incident report, between 1973 – 2023, to see if a female had fallen from a height etc.  This manual process, for 50 years’ worth of data, would exceed the time allowed under the Act.

Pursuant to Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act this letter acts as a Refusal Notice.

Pursuant to Section 16 of the Act I am required to offer you advice and assistance with regarding to refining your request to within the ‘appropriate limit’ (time/cost limit). However, due to the information provided above I am unable to suggest how you may refine your request and still receive the information within the cost threshold.  If you wish to discuss this please do not hesitate to contact me.

Please note that systems used for recording information are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data.  It should be noted therefore that this force’s response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other responses you may receive.